Stress, Anxiety and Winter in Chinese Medicine

By Toby Helmstetter, LAc

Recently, a long-standing patient came in for her acupuncture treatment and asked whether I thought I could help her with a new symptom. She said since about the week before Thanksgiving, she had become anxious. She was having trouble sleeping and during the day she had a general sense of being “not at ease.” Maybe a few flutters of her heart here and there; maybe a moment of mild panic when overwhelming thoughts would get the best of her. Of course, Chinese medicine has a long history of treating both physical and mental conditions, using the natural world as a mirror for what goes on inside us. That we were coming upon winter, the time of year associated with fear in Chinese medicine, made me think acupuncture could relieve her anxiety quickly, especially if we looked at it in the context of the season.

According to Chinese medicine, each of the five seasons—winter, spring, summer, late summer and fall—have certain physical and mental attributes that manifest in the human body during that time. Why, then, is fear the emotion associated with the winter season? Certainly the holidays ramp everything up a notch this time of year. But as Christmas isn’t really a phenomenon of the natural world, isn’t it curious that many of us feel more tense, more ill-at-ease than we do, say, in summer? In treating people over the years and seeing how anxieties always rise this time of year, I have a few ideas why.

With winter come many inconveniences to our modern life-style. Shorter days and colder temperatures should make us feel more introverted; realistically, everything should slow down. We think of bears hibernating, plants going dormant, and, unless we live in the tropics, our own lives should reflect this turning inward, this slower pace, this effort to conserve and consolidate our energies until the warmer months arrive. But, because we are all busy, because we all maintain jobs or families or causes to which we are dedicated; because we have to feed ourselves, clean our homes, keep contact with our loved ones and often times devote ourselves to people or things which drain rather than support our energies, because of all of these things, it is nearly impossible to slow down come winter time. And, because of our calendar year, because Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and the New Year all come within weeks of each other, we have more to do, more to accomplish and more places to be. Yet, naturally, perhaps by some internal rhythm to which we are all still, albeit distantly in-tune, we feel the need to turn inward.

The urge or even the necessity to push though the natural pull to rest is perhaps what makes us feel more anxious in winter. When we go against our own rhythm, when our body and hearts say one thing but our heads (or our families, bosses, friends or colleagues) say another, the natural response in our system is to respond with fear. It’s as if we are saying, “How on earth will I have the reserves to accomplish all this if I never get a chance to rest?” This internal struggle between what we have to do and what we want to do can certainly make us feel anxious.

In treating the patient I mentioned, she found relief from her anxiety with only a couple acupuncture treatments. But part of her treatment involved finding time every day to do nothing. What she found was that she was usually tired but still had things on her list that she wanted to do and she’d begin to feel overwhelmed at the thought of doing more. But instead of returning another phone call, running another errand or even finishing up the dishes, she took a brief moment to sit down, take some deep breaths, and gather her energies back up for herself. After taking one or two minutes to do this every time she found herself feeling anxious, she began to feel calmer, more centered and, best of all, better able to finish the tasks at hand.

So if these last months of winter are brewing in you a sense of anxiety, remember that acupuncture is exceptional at relieving anxiety and fear—whether you’ve had it for weeks or years. Remember also that fear is part of the natural rhythm of the season. You can harness the power of winter by using the anxiety as a reminder to find out whether you are doing what is best for yourself and the people you love. And if you find time to “consolidate,” to rest in order to replenish your energy this winter, you will find you are able to devote yourself to the things you need without feeling scattered, rushed or anxious.